Previews

Silent Hill 4: The Room

The fear of confinement -- a man trapped in his apartment for a week. It doesn't really sound that disturbing, but this is, indeed, Silent Hill.

Spiffy:

These guys have terror down to a science; new and creepy ideas abound.

Iffy:

First-person view may not work; is confinement terrifying or merely dull?

The Silent Hill series has garnered a reputation for the macabre. In short, it's best known for going places that you don't want to go in a way that makes them so compelling you can't help but do so anyway. Whether it's a darkened elementary school filled with skinless children, a hospital crowded with zombie nurses, or a moonlight rowboat ride, Silent Hill always offers up some of the spookiest and most twisted ideas in gaming today. Although the series began on the PlayStation, it became a force in the current generation, and the appearance of Silent Hill 2 on both PlayStation and Xbox cemented an audience eager for its brand of psychological horror.

Silent Hill 3 was released late last year on PS2 to much acclaim and popularity, but the team is already back with a sequel. Silent Hill 4: The Room promises to take the series in an original direction while retaining the feel that has made it a hit. The game strikes new ground for the series, apparently moving back towards the more personal, psychological feel of the second game while exploring the concept of confinement in one's own surroundings.

You can't escape.

"Your room is supposed to be safe -- your comfort zone," commented Producer Akira Yamaoka at the game's unveiling last week. But The Room is anything but comfortable. Its main theme is the fear of confinement, and the story starts with Henry Townshend, a man who -- for some inexplicable reason -- becomes trapped in his apartment. Crisscrossed chains prevent him from opening the front door, and after a week of captivity, a strange hole appears in his bathroom. Seeking an exit from his confinement, he travels through the tunnel and ends up ... somewhere else. Silent Hill? Yamaoka wouldn't confirm.

For the first time in the series, the team is experimenting with a first-person perspective. When you're in the apartment, you'll explore the world with a first-person view. When you travel through the portal, you'll view the game from Silent Hill's traditional third-person viewpoint. Interestingly, Yamaoka noted that the game has approximately a fifty-fifty split between first- and third-person viewpoints, implying you'll be spending plenty of time trapped in your room.

The developers are also promising to increase the volume of weapons available in the game, and make the control more responsive and action-based. A real-time window for switching weapons and using items will be implemented to keep the game's pace and tension high. Strain will arise not only from the fear of confinement -- and what goes wrong when your safe haven turns into a nightmare -- but from being stalked and chased. Chased by what, Yamaoka was unwilling to explain just yet. What he did stress is that the developers are striving for utmost realism, resulting in a new direction for the series -- although the fantastical creatures, supernatural situations, and puzzles of the series will remain.

Creepy portal = unpredictable results.

Of course, Silent Hill is very famous for its characters and cinematics, and this game is apparently no exception. While background details on the characters are all but non-existent, their visual features are pure, classic Silent Hill -- from the eerie smiles to the slightly tattered clothes and unkempt hair. Silent Hill's characters are always on the fringes, and this group appears to be no different. The addition of a young boy to the mix actually seems creepy instead of comforting -- which says a lot about Silent Hill.

In creating Silent Hill 4, the developers took a look again at the first Silent Hill, considered by many to still be one of the best examples of the horror genre, and figure out just what made it so great. They're looking for ways to show horror -- to re-examine the nature of scariness, and how to make everyday situations themselves terrifying. With The Room, it's clear that the very act of living a normal life is the stuff of nightmares when in the hands of the Silent Hill team. Striving for realism, and twisting the familiar, is the goal of Silent Hill 4.